Many talented creative actors, authors, musicians and other people reach a certain level of acclaim, fame and celebrity because of their work and public appeal.
But they can find the experience of fame difficult and challenging, especially if they are among the 20% of people with the trait of high sensitivity that many artists share.
“I am just a normal girl and a human being…I’m not going to find peace with it.” Jennifer Lawrence (in photo)
“Not famous – I want to be good at my craft.” Chloë Grace Moretz
Even with fame, money, success, you can “still feel empty inside and lack genuine emotional connection with yourself, your art, friends, or with your audience.” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
“There was a short time where I believed the hype…I believed I was really important, and that didn’t last very long because it didn’t feel good.” Lynda Carter
“Most people whose motor is too fast experience feelings of anxiety.” – Sensitivity expert, psychotherapist, author Julie Bjelland
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“Not famous – I want to be good at my craft.”
Chloë Grace Moretz: “A lot of people are like “So you want to be famous.” And I’m like “No, I want to be good at my craft. I don’t care about fame, I don’t care if I even ever make it. As long as people know what I am as an actress in this business, I’m set for my career right now.”
“I actually work at my craft, and I actually want to be the best in my category, and I want to be a true actress. And a lot of people just want fame, and there’s a huge difference.” [imdb profile]
Good to feel like you’re not noticed.
Julianne Moore once commented on feeling invisible: “It started when I was a kid. I moved frequently because my dad was in the army so I was always new in school. I think if you’ve ever done that, you know what it means to not matter in a room.
“I think it’s a good experience for everyone to have, to feel like they’re not noticed, because it teaches you to be empathetic.” [imdb profile]
(Photo: Director Kimberly Peirce, Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore working on Carrie, 2013.)
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Jennifer Lawrence noted fame is “a dangerous topic” and commented in an interview about how assaultive and how much negative impact it can have:
“I teeter on seeming ungrateful when I talk about this, but I’m kind of going through a meltdown about it lately.
“All of a sudden the entire world feels entitled to know everything about me, including what I’m doing on my weekends when I’m spending time with my nephew. And I don’t have the right to say, ‘I’m with my family.’ ”
She points out, “If I were just your average 23-year-old girl and I called the police to say that there were strange men sleeping on my lawn and following me to Starbucks, they would leap into action.
“But because I am a famous person, ‘Well, sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing we can do.’ It makes no sense.”
“I am just not OK with it. It’s as simple as that. I am just a normal girl and a human being, and I haven’t been in this long enough to feel like this is my new normal. I’m not going to find peace with it.”
[From article: The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence Covers the September Issue, by Jonathan Van Meter, Vogue, September 2013.]
More from Lawrence on being a celebrity:
“Socially, it’s so hard-core. There are all these peers judging you, and you’re never cool enough, never wearing the right outfit, saying the right thing. You don’t get out of middle school. You don’t get out of high school.
“There are always going to be people saying you’re a slut because you went out on a date on Friday, or you’re a bitch because you didn’t call somebody back because you have a life. I want everyone to like me. Who doesn’t [want that]?
“But, if they don’t, you’ve gotta move on. Then you grow up and become famous, and it’s the same thing multiplied by a billion!”
[Marie Claire magazine, May 2014. Red carpet photo at top from old page facebook.com/JenniferLawrence.]
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Even with fame, you may feel dissatisfied or depressed.
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
One of the topics she writes about is artists and depression:
“Maybe your career has not progressed the way you expected; perhaps you thought you’d be more successful by this point in your life.
“Not reaching your dreams or goals may have you feeling depressed.
“Or perhaps you have everything you want—fame, money, success—but you still feel empty inside and lack genuine emotional connection with yourself, your art, friends, or with your audience.
“Being in the public eye hasn’t made this struggle any easier; you may be hiding your depression behind the stage, in your art, and your performances.”
From her article (on her site) Are You An Artist Or Performer Who Is Struggling With Depression?
Fame is a kind of pressure, and as Dr. Holtz notes in another article, it “comes with the territory. You can’t escape it. It’s part of the fine arts and entertainment world.
“So, how can you work with pressure while still maintaining your authentic connection to yourself, your art, your audience, and the people you love?”
From article How to thrive in your career in the arts – living with pressure.
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As Dr. Holtz points out above, success and fame are not shields against dark feelings such as depression.
Photo: actor and musician Mandy Moore commented in an interview a number of years ago about having “felt really low, really sad.
“Depressed for no reason. I’m a very positive person, and I’ve always been glass-half-full. So it was like someone flipped a switch in me.”
She talked about some of the existential issues she was exploring at age 22 – like many of us do at times, even often.
She said she was asking questions that can help grow self-awareness, but also sometimes fuel depression, especially for more inner-directed and sensitive artists:
“I’ve been going through this really crazy time in my life – it’s what I imagine people fresh out of college go through. I’m asking myself life-altering questions, like Who am I? Where do I fit in this world? What am I doing, what do I want to do? Am I living to my full potential?”
Quotes are from my article Mandy Moore on depression and sensitivity.
(Photo from article “Mandy Moore Calls Out Journalist Who Wanted Her To Relive Trauma” By Christina Marfice, Yahoo Finance February 17, 2021.)
Like a number of actors, musicians and other artists, Mandy Moore has also talked about being being strongly emotional:
“I’ll cry at anything, even a tissue commercial. I’m overly sensitive. It’s so easy to hurt my feelings. I can cry at the drop of a hat.. all the time. I cry when I’m happy too.”
Over the course of many years reading interviews with talented actors and other artists, I have been struck by how many of them talk about crying as almost a part of their personality.
Crying and being intensely emotional helps fuel dynamic performances, and creative work in general.
And crying easily is a quality that many highly sensitive people share.
Psychologist Elaine Aron, one of the leading writers and researchers on high sensitivity (sensory processing sensitivity) notes the personality trait is present for about 15 to 20 percent of us.
She has found that HSPs (highly sensitive persons) “do cry more readily than others. It was a strong finding in our research.”
See more in my article Crying and our high sensitivity personality.
Actor Jessica Chastain has talked about being “very sensitive in real life. I cannot not cry if someone around me is crying…even if it’s not appropriate.
On rehearsals: “They’ll say, Save it, save it. I tell them: Don’t worry. I have a bottomless well of tears.”
She has also commented about being shy or introverted earlier in life, perhaps when she was a student at Juilliard:
“I’m not the girl at the club on the table. I’m going to be the one in the corner, quiet and so I don’t call attention to myself.”
From article Jessica Chastain And Being a Highly Sensitive Person.
Note – that article has links to others about the personality trait, including: *Elaine Aron and Alanis Morissette on Being a Highly Sensitive Person; *How to more fully realize your strengths and gifts as a Highly Sensitive Person; *Actors On Being Highly Sensitive.
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Being highly sensitive – the trait of sensory processing sensitivity
A brief summary of high sensitivity – maybe you can relate to some of these experiences:
Learn more at JulieBjelland.com. Read more about her work below.
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Strong emotional reactivity – such as crying – is only part of being highly sensitive, but can get overwhelming if we don’t take good care of our sensitive nervous system.
There are other qualities of the trait, like being more creative and more aware of other people’s feelings.
First, more about emotional reactions:
Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist, author and empowerment coach specializing in high sensitivity, and is a highly sensitive person herself.
She conducted a survey for HSPs (not specifically actors) on her Facebook page, asking the question, “Have you ever experienced a feeling of complete emotional or sensory meltdown?”. Responses included:
- “Yes, quite often.. I usually start to feel stressed and then emotional, I don’t think very rationally at the time, depending on where I am I may have to just “troop through it” so if I’m at work (and crying is not really an option for me at the time) the feels tend to morph into a physically heavy feeling, and then feeling completely drained, almost like the beginning of a flu. This usually wipes me out for the rest of the day.
- I feel waves of energy going up and down my body, I then start feeling clammy and faint and nauseous, like I am about to pass out, weak like I am unable to hold myself up. I have to sit down or lay down wherever I happen to be.
- Emotional – I cannot stop crying. Even when I think I’m “done” and have gone back to whatever it is I was doing, I am very easily triggered to start crying again the rest of the day. Sensory- I shrink into myself to try to get away. It feels like I don’t have skin on so everything is super abrasive to my nervous system. I feel like I need to run from whatever is causing the overload.”
Bjelland also includes in her post a tip:
“When you feel overwhelmed or overstimulated: Close your eyes and breath in for the count of 4, hold for 2, then exhale for 7. Do 5-7 cycles of this and it sends a calming signal to your brain.”
From her post “What Emotional & Sensory Overload Feels Like for HSPs” (August 2019) – find it on The HSP Blog on her Sensitive Empowerment site – where you can find her other articles, podcasts, books, courses and other resources.
Having a fast, high performance “motor”
Julie Bjelland writes:
“Imagine there is a motor on the inside of you.
“Some people have a fast motor and some people a slow motor and then of course there is everything in between.
“Most people whose motor is too fast experience feelings of anxiety.”
From article How to Relieve Stress and Anxiety When You’re a Highly Sensitive Person.
She also says “Did you know stress centers and calming centers can’t be activated at the same time in the brain?
“I think that’s amazing that we have some conscious control over this. It changed my life to know that I could intentionally activate calming centers that would automatically de-activate stress centers!”
From How To Activate Our calming Centers as a Highly Sensitive Person.
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Fame can have different kinds of impacts for different artists.
In April 2013 People Magazine named Gwyneth Paltrow the “World’s Most Beautiful Women in the World.”
She said that when her publicist sent her an email about it, “I was like, ‘this is a typo.’ Like I reread it three times, and then I got this really weird old feeling that my school bully was somehow playing a trick on me.
“I swear, I had to talk about [it] with my shrink. I went through this whole weird thing…And I was beyond surprised, flattered, and I still kinda can’t believe it. It’s really cool.”
[She was also once named ‘Most Hated’ Celeb in a Star Magazine Poll.]
[From “Gwyneth Paltrow on Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr. and Being the Most Beautiful Woman in the World,” unknown date, on old site Babble.com]
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Other actors have different perspectives on fame
Actor and director Sarah Polley has said, “I think you have to keep your distance from mainstream Hollywood in order to be a normal human being.
“I mean, I work there, and I like being there, but I love having an anonymous life. I think there’s definitely such a thing as being too famous.” [imdb.com]
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A number of actors – and other artists – have an ambivalent attitude about gaining or pursuing celebrity status, or just high visibility.
Winona Ryder once commented:
“Hollywood people associate movies solely with fame and I didn’t enjoy working in that way anymore.
“I am so much happier now.”
[Another Magazine March 2006]
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Another aspect of fame is the hype, and what that can do to your sense of reality.
Lynda Carter – like Gwyneth Paltrow – was also once voted “The Most Beautiful Woman In The World” and admits “there was a short time where I believed the hype.
“Not the “beautiful” things but that I believed I was really important, and that didn’t last very long because it didn’t feel good.”
She explained, “You become a caricature of yourself and there’s nothing real below that and what it does is that it just makes you scared because you know that’s not who you really are.
“There’s that true self inside that longs to connect to people and all those accolades tend to isolate you rather than to connect you.
“So most of my life I’ve worked on shedding those images and doing things with my life that actually help people and that’s not to take away from Wonder Woman or any of the artistic things I’ve done because it brings pleasure and all of that but I guess my message is that people are not so different from me.”
(From “Lynda Carter – A Wonder of a Woman” by Shawn Winstian, Northwest Herald Aug 2003.)
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But fame can be a valuable aspect of career growth – perhaps especially for actors and other artists whose work is “onstage” and in public view.
Recognition vs expectations
A counselor who works with a number of prominent actors, Mary Rocamora thinks “Many gifted performers crave public recognition because it fuels their creative process.
“A major preoccupation of gifted performers is the struggle to find their way into the company of their peers so that their talents can flourish. Becoming famous and respected almost certainly brings opportunities to work with other gifted individuals.”
But the dark side of fame can undermine personal and creative growth, as Rocamora notes:
“When gifted performers ascend to fame and on-the-street recognizability, they face increased levels of public exposure. They are often overwhelmed by public expectations, loss of privacy, and the fear of public humiliation if their imperfections are disclosed to the press.”
From article “Counseling Issues with Recognized and Unrecognized Gifted Adults, With Six Case Studies” by Mary Rocamora.
Photo: “When you’re famous, you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way.” Marilyn Monroe – in article Actor’s Privacy and The Dark Side of Fame.
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Many actors and other artists are highly sensitive people, or introverted, or shy, or all three to some extent – see related articles below – and fame can be especially challenging for sensitive people.
But the experiences of fame can also be strengthening for some artists.
Kim Basinger once commented:
“Because I’m such a shy person, having to live it out loud in front of everyone has made me a stronger woman, so much stronger, that it’s been a gift to me in a way.”
[From “Basinger Better Than Ever,” ExtraTV.com]
Related articles:
Amanda Seyfried on fame, anxiety and being self-critical.
Why Do You Want to Be Famous? By Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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